We know it does not know whence it is moving, nor why. Well, perhaps
its presiding god, who is determined the world shall go round, would be
foolish to tell us.

The sun has dropped behind the black serration of the western city.
Now the River with all the lower world loses substance, becomes
vaporous and unreal. Moving so fast then? But the definite sky
remains, a hard dome of glowing saffron based on thin girders of iron
clouds. The heaven alone is trite and plain. The wharves, the
factories, the ships, the docks, all the material evidence of hope and
industry, merge into a dim spectral show in which a few lights burn,
fumbling with ineffectual beams in dissolution. Out on the River a
dark body moves past; it has bright eyes, and hoots dismally as it goes.

There is a hush, as though at sunset the world had really resolved, and
had stopped moving. But from the waiting steamer looming over us, a
gigantic and portentous bulk, a thin wisp of steam hums from a pipe,
and hangs across the vessel, a white wraith. Yet the hum of the steam
is too subdued a sound in the palpable and oppressive dusk to be
significant. Then a boatswain's pipe rends the heavy dark like the
gleam of a sword, and a great voice, awed by nothing, roars from the
steamer's bridge. There is a sudden commotion, we hear the voice
again, and answering cries, and by us, towards the black chasm of the
River in which hover groups of moving planets, the mass of the steamer
glides, its pale funnel mounting over us like a column. Out she goes,
turning broadside on, a shadow sprinkled with stars, then makes slow
way down stream, a travelling constellation occulting one after another
all the fixed lights.

Captain Tom knocks out his pipe on the heel of his boot, his eyes still